LIST 238 - 31/01/2026

Hello again,

First of all, a big thankyou to everyone who has reached out since I reactivated That Music List earlier this month.

I'm very conscious that looking at a page of links isn't necessarily how everyone chooses to consume music these days, and that the adverts on YouTube in particular can rankle. If everyone's stuff was on Bandcamp, and Bandcamp could be nested in Blogger in the same way as YouTube is, I'd be all over it more.

I've already had one friend comment that I wasted no time in namedropping The Field Mice once again. Guilty as charged! He'll note that they're even more present this week, as Skywriting is the subject of the first edition of my A Loved Album feature.

This is an unashamedly personal choice, as this 1990 work is not just loved, but endures as my all-time favourite album ("long-player" seems barely appropriate, given it clocks in at a mere 34 minutes and bits).

If the prevailing narrative that Sarah Records was the preserve of jangly indiepop and nothing else had already been dealt a few blows (many by The Field Mice themselves) by the time Skywriting hit the shelves in June 1990, then this wildly diverse album killed them stone dead. Six tracks, each a different genre, but at least five of them still recognisably the work of the same band despite the eclecticism.

Triangle attempts sequencer-driven baggy, albeit with muted vocals and existential crisis lyrics replacing the cocksure swagger and hedonism of so many of the genre's then chief practitioners. Canada's introduction promises some sort of US soul pop, rather than the neat little paean to The Stars Of Heaven which follows.

Clearer is the nearest thing on the album to indiepop, albeit executed with more polish and confidence than the band had ever managed previously; had I first heard this song in 1990, rather than on belated purchase eighteen months later, it would have been a shoe-in for my Favourite Song of the Year feature, so highly do I rate it even now.

It Isn't Forever is Movement-era New Order, glacial synths, Morse Code, thrashy outro and all. Below The Stars offers a vision of an early 1990s world in which the then still nascent Spiritualised aren't already hoovering their way through the medicine cabinet. Only the staggering Humblebee doesn't immediately (if at all) identify itself as a Field Mice track, the Clock DVA homage containing no vocals from Bobby Wratten and an atypical guitar drone buried deep amid the multilayered sample barrage.

Many present-day reviews posit the idea that Skywriting was a deeply divisive release at the time, one which split opinion among those who'd followed the band unwaveringly to that point. Was it? It went further in pushing the variety envelope than predecessor Snowball, but that had still opened with another extended sequencer-driven meditation and signed off with a multiple guitar-layered thrash followed by a dark ballad reminiscent of Black.

From my point of view, the mix of styles was just the ticket, mirroring as it did listening habits to that point largely informed by the stylistic gear changes of certain radio programmes and various artist compilation albums. Indeed, as regards the latter, my first exposure to the track Triangle had been through the inclusion of an edited version of it on Beechwood's Indie Top 20 Volume 10 not long beforehand (NB In an exchange of letters around the time of Sarah Records' retirement in August 1995, one of Matt Haynes or Clare Wadd insisted I was the first person they knew of who'd discovered the label that way).

Whatever the truth of it, were Skywriting a new release in the present day, that genre-hopping likely wouldn't raise too many eyebrows (either in general, or in the specific context of Wratten's impressively broad body of work in the intervening years), and I doubt I'd love it any the less for that.

Astonishingly, considering I've included somewhere in the region of seventeen Field Mice tracks across That Music List's lifespan previously, none of Clearer, It Isn't Forever or Humblebee has ever featured before, and it is a pleasure to be able to include all three now.

It is, of course, not just all about a 36-year-old album from the depths of south London this week. 8th Deadly Sin gives us the chance to consider the tremendous third coming of Miki Berenyi, once of Lush, then of Lush again, and latterly of Piroshka and her own Trio. I sense a liberated air about Miki these days, the product of either or both of the greater autonomy she retains over her music career now and the release - in both senses of the word - of her searing memoirs (albeit one would perhaps like to see Emma Anderson exercise her right to reply on some clutch points).

It was a shame that last July's Pop At the Lock alldayer clashed with the Nev Clay gig I mentioned last week, as seeing Miki live for the first time would have been a genuine treat.

Then And Now this week heralds the unexpected and joyful return of Hydroplane after just shy of a quarter of a century. The echoey production, Kerrie Bolton's clear and heartstring-tugging vocals, the gentle percussive ticks and messrs Cummings and Withycombe's tasteful guitar insertions are still all present and correct, not just from the last time those named convened as Hydroplane but stretching back further to their more overtly indiepop-focussed days as The Cat's Miaow. One of my all-time favourite Australian bands back then, one of my all-time favourite Australian bands now.

Plenty more I could say on the remainder, but whilst (obviously) recommending every track I've shared this week, permit me to draw your attention also to the finest pop statement of a Yorkshire musical genius (Bill Nelson); a piece of German punk-pop that would have been a scene staple had an indiepop band recorded it (Die Ärzte; and yes, this is a hill I'm prepared to die on); as excellent a pop track as Nottingham's lovely Alexander Christopher Hale has ever crafted (August Actually); a pre-fame Ian Broudie (Care); and a tribute to the late Stephen Luscombe (including something quite extraordinary he played clarinet on in the 1970s).


J xx

Click on the video to play each tune (links last checked as all working 30/01/2026).

Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.

 

MING - La ballade de Johnny Guitar (2001)

DRY CLEANING - Cruise Ship Designer (2025)

THE FLAMING LIPS – The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (2006)

BILL NELSON – Do You Dream in Colour? (1980)

MIKI BERENYI TRIO - 8th Deadly Sin (2025)

A LOVED ALBUM: The Field Mice - Skywriting (1990)

THE FIELD MICE - Clearer 

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT

DIE ÄRZTE - Westerland (1988)

ROBYN - Dopamine (2025)

AUGUST ACTUALLY – Carry Your Good Name (2015)

BRITISH ELECTRIC FOUNDATION – A Baby Called Billy (1981)

MANU CHAO – Viva Tu (2024)

KILLING JOKE – Sanity (1986)

 

A LOVED ALBUM: The Field Mice - Skywriting (1990)

THE FIELD MICE - It Isn't Forever

RAPPING SONGS

DEL THA FUNKEE HOMOSAPIEN - Mistadobalina (1991)

SNÕÕPER - Fitness (2023)

THE YUMMY FUR - Prole Birthday (1996)

CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER – Adventures in One Octave (2013)

FABIENNE DELSOL – The Face (2019)

FIGURINE – New Mate (2000)

A LOVED ALBUM: The Field Mice - Skywriting (1990)

THE FIELD MICE - Humblebee

THEN AND NOW: Hydroplane

HYDROPLANE - Houdini’s Plane (2025)

HYDROPLANE - Wurlitzer Jukebox (1997)

LANDE HEKT - Favourite Pair of Shoes (2025)

ORBITAL – Belfast (1991)

HANN – Checkout Girl (2019)

DUBSTAR – Just a Girl She Said (1995)

FUTURE BIBLE HEROES – Keep Your Children in a Coma (2013)

MY FORGOTTEN 80s IS MORE FORGOTTEN THAN YOUR FORGOTTEN 80s

CARE - Whatever Possessed You (1984)

IN LOVING MEMORY: Stephen Luscombe

RICHARD STRAUSS / PORTSMOUTH SINFONIA - Sonnenaufgang, from: Also sprach Zarathustra (1896/1974)

BLANCMANGE - Blind Vision (1983)

LIST 237 - 24/01/2026

So here we are, then - the first List since May 2018, and a few changes to note.  

Firstly, a longer running time, upped from just under the length of a CD to just under the length of a two-hour radio show.  That's not an unsubtle dropping of a hint on my part, as my limitations as a broadcaster were long exposed some fifteen years ago.  Rather, I just find two hours a nicer, rounder quantity of time to work with than an hour and twenty.

Secondly, more features.  Unless they were a themed special (by year, Xmas, Eurovision, etc.), previous Lists would generally include Then and Now and In Loving Memory as a maximum, and nothing else.  However, there are now well over twenty different features that'll be appearing.  Not all at once, and some more than others, but a goodly handful each time, just to keep it interesting.  Click here for a glossary of what they are and what they contain.

Thirdly and finally, embedded videos!  I have no idea whether this feature was already present in Blogger the last time I uploaded a List; I'm guessing at yes, but the Victorian laptop I was using at the time would likely have screamed enough at anything other than the construction of the simplest, blandest of lists.  I'm sure it must be handier to click on a video or link without having to be propelled out of the List in order to watch it, though I suspect you might still need to for links to Bandcamp material.

Right, then, what can I tell you about some of today's contents?

The List actually contains my three favourite songs of 2025, starting with number one.  I'm sure I wasn't alone among Cardiacs fans in harbouring fears that I'd actually want to like the LSD album more than I ultimately actually would like it, chiefly out of goodwill towards all those responsible for this herculean task of crafting something from the raw materials the late Tim Smith left behind.  

Shear - if one possibly can - the music of all of the back story that comes with it, however, and what's there is still an astonishing piece of psychedelic punk pop rock.  Not the creative or songwriting equal of the Sing to God album for me, as almost nothing on Earth ever will be, but a better produced, richer sounding piece of work whose highpoints are very high indeed.

Lead single Woodeneye, originally played in fragment form by Tim Smith to at least one Cardiacs acolyte down the phone nearly two decades ago, went a long way towards assuaging fears that LSD would be Cardiacs lite.  Simultaneously direct yet complex, simultaneously beautiful yet manic, it does exactly what you'd hope one of the poppier statements on a Cardiacs album might do.

There's an added poignancy for me to the whole Cardiacs story these days, following the recruitment of Mike Vennart to the recording and live ranks of the band.  In his former day job as frontperson of Oceansize, Mike would have been among the regular listening pleasures of my much-loved sister-in-law Kate, who left us suddenly in 2023.  I'd have loved to play her this.

Second place for me in 2025 was There's More to Life than Crooks by Lighting in a Twilight Hour, just the most recent reminder of Bobby Wratten's propensity for occasional piercing political statements hidden in the plain sight of beautiful indiepop music.  

The Field Mice won't necessarily have been thought of by all as overtly political, beyond their association with a record label in Sarah which intrinsically was; yet that early Wratten vehicle occasionally gave us statement songs such as the pro-LGB This Love is Not Wrong and the ahead-of-the-curve dismantling of toxic masculinity Song 6.  Cut to the staggering Dear Faraway Friend from his Northern Picture Library incarnation, apparent musical simulation of a war scenario, air raid, sirens and all.  Cut to Trembling Blue Stars' A Statue to Wilde, a reflection on the progress made on gay rights and acceptance, and the progress still to make.  And so it goes on.

More so than most of his previous projects, I've found some of Lightning in a Twilight Hour's output veering towards the pretty and admirable rather than the compelling.  Not in the fascinating soundscape and noise experimentation pieces Bobby has long enjoyed crafting; they can be treated separately.  Rather, some of the pieces intended as conventional pop or indiepop music just haven't quite landed, meandering rather than grabbing.  

...Crooks does everything right, though.  Six minutes of precise, calmly delivered barbs against the Trumps and Farages of this world and all they stand for, set against gently pulsing electronic pop, thoughtful guitar additions and Anne Mari Barker Davies's unmistakable backing vocals.  "Let your existence be the resistance" is a line originally attributed to Albert Camus, I understand.  It's also a single line in the song that sums up the whole perfectly.

And third place?  Stereolab.  They can be an arid, detached proposition live, sometimes a little bit too enchanted with how far they can stretch an idea on stage whilst punters increasingly cough and kick their heels (the version of Lo Boob Oscillator they closed with when I saw them in Sheffield in 2019 went from long to overlong to self-indulgent to purgatory in succession).  

A few of their late-1990s/early-2000s albums could probably be accused of similar, but comeback longplayer Instant Holograms on Metal Film was pleasingly short on such excesses even within its hour-long run time, and lead single Aerial Troubles sparked with pure pop song vim and accessibility in a way that seemed almost entirely lost to them around the Sound Dust or Cobra and Phases... period.  Tick, v.g.

I've banged on for way too long already, and rest assured most Lists won't have anything close to this much preamble.  Quick notes about a few other inclusions, however;

Nev Clay's York gig in July last year, put on by Jo and Pete Dale from Knitting Circle, not only afforded me the chance to see this kindly, humble, hilarious and super gifted singer songwriter play for the first time this century (gigs much outside of Newcastle by him are few and far between), but lit the touchpaper in terms of wanting to go out and see live music more often again.  To all of those concerned, I thank you most humbly.

Duck get a deserved play for services to my revived live music consumption also, Sarah and Chris from the band having taken on the running of Sheffield DIY venue Hatch, formerly the Audacious Art Experiment, in the time since I saw them perform Monsters (and much else besides) there some years prior.  Long may it prosper.

The choosing of a Telex track which namechecks Brigitte Bardot for this List long predates her recent passing, and rest assured shouldn't be taken as any endorsement of her more hateful personal views whatsoever.  It's definitely an endorsement of those ace deadpan Belgian electronic funsters, however.

Red Pony Clock were a highlight of the first Indietracks festival I was able to attend, back in 2008, Gabe and Gerry Saucedo skilfully squeezing their too-many-member psychedelic mariachi ensemble (their words) onto the long, very thin truck stage (the proper outdoor stage came a year later) for one of the entire weekend's most joyful performances.

J xx

==================== 

 

FAVOURITE SONG OF THE YEAR: 2025

CARDIACS - Woodeneye

THE AMPS – I Am Decided (1995)

LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR - There’s More to Life than Crooks (2025)

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN - Half Way to Crazy (1989)

NEV CLAY - Leaving Do (2025)

THE DECEMBERISTS – 16 Military Wives (2006)

THE CHAMELEONS – Nathan’s Phase (1986)

BRIX & THE EXTRICATED  - Something to Lose, Part 2 (2017)

DANCE HALL AT PEEL ACRES

L DOPA - Feel Ya Need (Instrumental) (1993)

THEN AND NOW: The Lemonheads 

THE LEMONHEADS - 58 Second Song (2025)

THE LEMONHEADS - Confetti (1992)

DUCK – Monsters (2017)

THE HIDDEN CAMERAS – Shame (2003)

I JORDAN - Worth It (2025)

COMET GAIN – I Close My Eyes to Think of God (1998)

DUM DUM GIRLS – Season in Hell (2012)

BILLY BRAGG – Thatcherites (1997)

EUROTASTIC

TELEX - Moskow Diskow (1979)

SCIENTISTROCK

LABRADFORD - Comfort (1995)

THE DESERT WOLVES – Love Scattered Lives (1987)

LOU HAYTER - In My Heart (2024)

MARTHA – 1967, I Miss You I’m Lonely (2014)

LAIKA - 44 Robbers (1994)

NINA NASTASIA – All Your Life (2000)

STEREOLAB - Aerial Troubles (2025)

DAVID LEACH – Hipster Problems (2016)

 

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE

RED PONY CLOCK - Don’t Forget Who Your Friends Are (2007)

IN LOVING MEMORY: Dave Ball

SOFT CELL - The Night (2002)

THE GRID - Rollercoaster (1994)

That Music List - a Glossary of Features

(NB If you've come here via a link in a List, please click on your browser Back button once you're done to return there).

 
From the 2026 relaunch onwards, every new List will include at least one of these features, though rarely close to all (except on occasional Feature Fest specials):
 
Bulletproof
The songs of the cider-stained, sticky floors, temperamental PA systems and heaving, sweaty venues that comprised my formative ventures into clubbing in Oldham (and to a limited extent Manchester) during the early-mid 1990s.  Alternative club nights called things like Subculture, Ambition? and Bulletproof, the last-named of which just works best for me as the title of this feature (PWEI fan, moi?).  Stripy Tight Nights was another working title.
 
Compiled by Chet & Bee (and sometimes Tim)
Selections from Indie Top 20, a Beechwood Music compilation series of the late-1980s to mid-1990s and for a while my regular gateway to a lot of new discoveries.  Created and compiled by siblings Chet and Bee Selwood (offspring of Strange Fruit Record co-founder Clive), before that task passed on to Tim Millington, this was indie in the original sense of the word - many genres, independently distributed - until volume 18, when Tim started to let the major label guitar darlings of the NWONW, Britpop and soforth sneak on and the series lost all sense of identity and purpose.  Sigh.  Suffice it to say that most choices will originate from the first 17 pristine instalments.
 
Dance Hall at Peel Acres
Some personal favourites from among the progressive house, hardcore techno, drum & bass, happy hardcore and lord knows what else that Mr John Robert Parker Ravenscroft enjoyed lobbing into his playlist.  Title is a riff on Dance Hall at Louse Point, the 1996 album by John Parish and PJ Harvey.  Not a dance music album at all, of course, but not wholly irrelevant as Parish and Harvey did perform a session lifted from it at Peel Acres that year.
 
Doch der Countdown läuft
German language favourites of many eras - Neue Deutsche Welle and Hamburger Schule movements, pop, synthy stuff, darkwave, indiepop.  Und so weiter, as we say auf Deutsch.  Named after a line in the German language original of Major Tom, Peter Schilling's global (except the UK, tsk) smash hit (and theme tune of Deutschland 83/86/89 decades later).
 
Eurotastic
The name I would have given to a club night of European music treats, had I ever worked out how to put one on in either a bricks and mortar club or else on Mixlr.  Maybe one day.  Expect some familiar Europop tracks, yes, but also plenty of Italo disco, Sabadell Sound, arch French pop, rock, hip-hop, and the odd surprise from as far afield as Estonia or Belarus.
 
Fabriqué en France
The French language equivalent of Doch der Countdown läuft (q.v.).  I suppose either has the potential to overlap with Eurotastic, but some tracks just feel more right here than there.  Trust me, I probably know what I'm doing...
 
Favourite Song of the Year
Selections taken from what's an incomplete list, as they are those choices that I made at the time for the given year which I still stand by years later.  Strict criterion, that.
 
Goodier Before Wiley & Lamacq
This may not be everybody's view, but I far preferred Mark Goodier's stewardship of Radio 1's Evening Session to that of Jo Wiley and Steve Lamacq which followed.  Several reasons, but the biggest being Goodier's comparative guilelessness (in the very nicest sense of the word) freed him to play certain tracks that his cooler, more cynical successors would likely not have.  "Before", therefore, has a double meaning.  The selections in this feature were all definitely played during the Goodier years, 1990-1993.
 
If We Do, We’ll Keep It Alive
We all have our personal Day The Music Died, and the announcement of the Indietracks festival's permanent retirement in 2021 after fourteen outstanding years runs John Peel's death mightily close as being mine.  What I owe that festival, musically and personally.  This feature is dedicated to Indietracks' memory, each selection taken from an act who performed at least once there during its storied history.  The title is a line borrowed from Dream of Firsby Station, by Indietracks ever-present Pete Green.
 
In Loving Memory
One of two regular features retained from the pre-hiatus TML.  A musical tribute, in essence, with one or more tracks from a performer who sadly slipped away recently.
 
Isn’t That…?
A multipurpose feature, but one to which you can say "Isn't that...?" regardless of the choice.  Sometimes it'll be a ridiculously famous person in a promo video (and not always pre-fame); sometimes a subsequently famous performer in an earlier act; and sometimes a piece of music you'll do your brains trying to remember what it was the theme tune of.  As I say, "Isn't that...?" candidates all.
 
I Was an Armchair Raver
Because sitting at home well over 30 years ago and enjoying 160 to 200bpms, stabby Orchestra Hit samples, hissing Roland Juno Alphas and the rest of it with a cup of tea and a biscuit was perfectly possible, thank you very much. 
 
The Long Goodbye
This feature, very simply, sees a given List play out with a longer than average length song.  Double figure minutes where possible, though I'll tolerate nine at a push.
 
A Loved Album
Three or four tracks lifted from one of my favourite albums.  Not knowing every last beat of every last song thereon isn't an absolute prerequisite for qualification, though in many cases it just so happens that I do.
 
My Forgotten '80s is More Forgotten than Your Forgotten '80s
A riposte to those social media lists or commercially released compilations of "songs from the 1980s that you've forgotten about" (except I haven't).  Instead, these are '80s tracks which genuinely just don't get heard very much at all now, and in some cases barely have for decades; yet in most cases I could hear them played sufficiently often for a while on either Radio 1 or Piccadilly Radio to suppose their imminent chart success was a formality (it never came). Note forgotten rather than lost, in deference to Gary Crowley's excellent Lost '80s compilations, a notable exception to the aforementioned exercises in historical revisionism.

 
No Language in our Lungs
Instrumental tracks by acts not primarily associated with instrumentals. Ideally I'd have named this feature after an actual instrumental rather than an XTC song with words in it, but it's just too perfect a name.
 
Rapping Songs
1980s and 1990s hip-hop selections from both sides of the pond.  I nearly named this feature The Rap Singers after the Stewart Lee routine, but instead went for the Look Around You reference which approaches the subject matter a bit more affectionately.
 
Scientistrock
Post-rock, space rock, unrock, Radiophonic Workshop and adjacent material, maybe even some Bristolian rural psychedelia.  Named after an ace Hawkwind-on-zero-budget space chug by Leicester lovelies John Sims.
 
A Session of Sorts
Four tracks by the same act.  Not necessarily the hits, in fact likelier not, but just anything from any parts of their recorded careers that I thought sufficiently interesting to share and hadn't previously.  Resisted the temptation to call this feature We've Got Lumps Of It Round The Back, in case the Monty Python estate took umbrage.
 
Straight In At…
A feature salvaged from a feed I used to run on Twitter, a place which I hardly go anywhere near now if I can help it.  A selection of songs, no more than four and often fewer, which entered the official UK singles chart (for the very first time, in the case of songs that were reissued or re-entered later) on the date of the List in question in years gone by.  Not the highest charting ones, nor necessarily the most famous ones, either, as there's more fun in unearthing the gems.
 
A Tangle of Jangle
Because it's not just Craig Charles who can do this whole a-something-of-[name-of-genre-which-rhymes-with-the-something] shtick.  A trio of tracks mostly featuring jangly guitars, chiming melodies and thoughts of love.  Yes, expect lovely indiepop.
 
Then and Now
The other regular feature carried over from TML's earlier years - simply, one new and one old song from a specific act.
 
Wir sind die neuen Götter
Darkwave, EBM and industrial, primarily lifted from the soundtrack of the club nights of my year working in Germany, 1995-6.  A time of many visits to alternative nightclubs called things like Scarabee, hidden away under motorway bridges or behind railway sidings.  All good clean fun, officer.
 
Yes, They Did Other Songs As Well
Another track by an act primarily (disproportionately?) associated with one well-known or ubiquitous track, just to prove that wasn't all they had about them.  Note the lack of use of the term one-hit wonder, as not all choices were hitmakers.